29 April 2016 Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Ross McEwan appeared on LBC for a half-hour phone-in chaired by Nick Ferrari on 20th November last year. Callers included Ray Perman, former FT journalist and author of Hubris: How HBOS Wrecked The Best Bank In Britain, who asked some powerful questions about regulatory failure in the light […]

July 13th, 2014 On 2 May 2014, the Royal Bank of Scotland’s New Zealand-born chief executive, Ross McEwan, unveiled a surprisingly strong set of financial results for the bank that he has led since 1 October 2013. But has it really turned the corner? McEwan the and RBS’s outgoing finance director Nathan Bostock then answered […]

7th November 2015 The FactSheet compiled by RBS’s senior communications executive and deputy chief economist Andrew Wilson in February 2007 pleased his master, the bank’s chief executive, Fred Goodwin, as it put RBS’s financial success in context. But it was also incredibly bombastic and dangerously hubristic Royal Bank of Scotland issued an extraordinary flyer to journalists on the […]

By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: 4 October 2015 Businesspeople who claim to have been ruined by RBS’s Global Restructuring Group are refusing to co-operate with a firm hired by the Financial Conduct Authority to investigate the scandal, potentially derailing the probe into the bank’s so-called “vampire unit”. The RBS GRG Business Action Group […]

By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: 7 June 2015 George Osborne’s plan to sell the government’s 80 per cent stake in Royal Bank of Scotland, the expected highlight of this week’s Mansion House speech, looks set to fall short of Treasury expectations as leading investors baulk at buying shares in the state-rescued bank. Sources […]

November 12th, 2014 This is brilliant off-the-cuff reporting by Paul Mason, economics editor of Channel 4 News. It’s all very well for the Royal Bank of Scotland’s chief executive Ross McEwan to claim to be angry that some of his bank’s traders rigged the FX markets in order to rip off the bank’s clients and counterparties. But I […]

By: Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: 17 August 2014 The decision by RBS to dissolve its Global Restructuring Group, an arm of the bank that stands accused of destroying viable UK businesses for profit, will do little to repair the damage caused to the bank’s beleaguered reputation. By Ian Fraser As a damage limitation […]

June 26th, 2014 The Royal Bank of Scotland, which last year made losses of £8.2 billion, held its annual general meeting yesterday. The shareholders’ gathering was a slightly calmer affair than some of the recent ones I have attended. Held at the bank’s sprawling, campus-style “world headquarters” at Gogarburn, near Edinburgh – itself a monument to the hubris […]

By Ian Fraser Published: The Herald Date: 21 May 2014 In an unprecedented clash between two of the UK’s biggest banks, Lloyds Banking Group is suing government owned Royal Bank of Scotland over its “misleading” £12 billion rights issue. In what is seen as the first American-style class action to hit the English courts Lloyds – […]

May 12th, 2014 Royal Bank of Scotland is, once again, discovering that it is unable to operate above the law. On Friday, a U.S. judge ordered the Edinburgh-based bank to stop using a software program that underpins its trade finance division, after finding the bank had been infringing the system’s copyright for six years. U.S. District […]